Neil,
You're probably monitoring the unrev list, but I
know you're pretty busy right now so I'm sending it
direct to make sure it gets to you. (For some reason,
I have two addresses for you, so I'm sending to both.)
The issue is this:
A few days ago, it became very clear to me that
"relations" need to be "first class objects" in
the repository. (That is, they are viewable and
manipulatable like information nodes.) But what
would the interface be? (I can see the data structures
clearly, but I'm really at a loss to see how the
interface would work.)
Let's take an example: The "equivalence" relationship.
Of several possible relations that would make sense in
the system, this one may well be the most valuable.
It allows a question posed by a new user to be equated
to one that has already been answered, and it allows two
discussions to be equated, so that the subtree under
each is available for inspection and cross-ferilization.
Suppose you are monitoring your "mailbox" and someone
posts a question: "How do you do X?". Because you are
a long time participant on the list, you recognize the
question as equivalent to one of the FAQ questions, "How
do you do Y?".
Now, rather than having to answer that query, what you
can do is add the knowledge of that relationship
to the repository. So you say "equivalent to", track
down the query it relates to, click it, and you're done.
In fact, you probably have the FAQ window nearby for just
such occasions.
That part of the interface isn't too difficult to
envision. The real question is, how does that knowledge
addition appear to the original sender??
What does that person see? What is that makes he/she aware
that the answer they seek is available in another subtree,
now one click away from their query -- and probably
relocated in the display-space so that it appears physically
adjacent?
Similarly, if you notice that discussions in separate
threads both started from essentially identical observations,
you could mark them equivalent. How would that information
appear? How would followers of each thread become aware of
that a new relationship had been posted which leads them to
the other?
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